There's also an excellent description (with good pictures) in _Japanese
Bookbinding_ by - er, um - Kazuo Ikegami? Sorry, I'm 5400 miles from my
copy. Good description, and a great book.
Now, to tell the truth I haven't ever followed his method or Hannah
Dunleavy's, but used another still. It's simple, but rather touchy, and
I wouldn't try it with thin or loose-weave fabric, at least till you get
better at it than I have. You lay out a layer of very-much-thinned glue
on a flat, smooth surface (wax paper, or even glass would probably work,
and still be cleanable). The layer should be very thin and even--this is
why you thin the glue, but you don't want it so thin it will soak into
your fabric too easily. Once it's down, you lay on the fabric, wrong
side down, DON'T press it down, but make sure it smoothly touches
everywhere. Dragging it a bit around the glue may help to give a
smoother coverage, but you have to be careful. remember you can use the
corners, since they'll be cut off. In fact, if you can manage it, try
using a significantly larger piece of fabric than you'll need, so you
have margins all round. You want to peel it back up, again with care,
fairly soon, though this depends on the drying speed of your glue, and
on its liquidity. Let it dry face down, or over a rack, I suppose. This
forms a pretty good backing when done right, though you still have to be
careful not to put too much glue/paste on for pasting it down, since the
backing will never be perfect. In most situations I glue the _other_
surface to the extent I can when using fabric done this way--still using
much-thinned, carefully applied adhesive.
Probably sounds a lot more difficult than it is, from all that...
RCB
Suhag Shirodkar wrote:
>
> Good morning all!
>
> A few weeks ago we had a very useful (for me, at least) discussion about
> backing fabric and gluing/pasting it onto bookboard. Somebody had described a
> way of getting the fabric on without backing it at all. I looked in the
> archives but couldn't find it. Could somebody help?
> Thanks,
> Suhag